General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I want to write a story about a thought experiment that I have on the other day : What kind of catastrophe will happen if an asteroid, let just say about 70 meters in diameter, penetrated Earth's a...
Those of you who are familiar with the DC Comics hero Firestorm know that he can alter the chemical structure of any form of inorganic matter, provided he knows the chemical equation. In my story, ...
So given an Earth in our near future, year 2100 or so, where some of our tech has improved to the point where we have robots and the usual sci-fi devices for interfacing with computers. A colony i...
I don't fully understand the mechanisms behind an ice cap that contains all the water in the oceans. Just to be specific, I have a planet that resembles Mars, i.e. desert at the equator, ice at pol...
King Solomon, founder of the Solomonian Dynasty, was the first emperor of China. After he conquered the mainland, he gave his alchemists the single command of creating an elixir that would allow hi...
What if there was a binding global resolution passed tomorrow mandating that all countries gradually close down their terrestrial resource extraction sites and instead source from asteroid mines? W...
Hideaki Sena's cult classic novel, Parasite Evil and it's video game sequels revolve around the premise of mitochondria gaining sentience and usurping mankind after aeons upon aeons of multicellula...
Assuming the power and tech existed to do so (addressing the requisite heat, pressure, etc), would it be possible to draw in atmosphere, condense and heat/cool the particles, and then produce a hig...
Premise/question Correct me if I'm wrong, or if humans have terraformed the planet by the time you're reading this, but Mars is mostly desert-like. It has large ice caps which contain most of its ...
In the universe of my story, the Earth is ridden with metahumans with uncanny powers that do all sorts of different things. Of course, to do all this, they would require a tremendous amount of ener...
This question answers the issue I was wondering about of how well an exoskeleton suit could help my characters move as normal in higher and lower gravity Could a robotic exoskeleton give humans Ear...
I am creating an RPG and I created a continent in which it is set on. I want to make sure that the climate types in it are realistic as well as the continent. This island is called Lartess. Lar...
Given a world where a human-like brain is synthetizable, I wonder: A human-like artificial brain would most likely crave sensorial overwhelm. Pleasure to humans is something deeply associated with...
Ningens are an old internet legend/creepypasta. Supposedly living in the polar regions of the globe, these creatures are described as having white-skin, a roughly humanoid structure with clear hea...
My world is a satellite of a gas giant. It has an atmosphere and is mostly covered by water (the percentage of water to its surface is somewhere in the high 80s-low 90s). Its rotation period is 28 ...
I'm writing a steampunk/weird west story set in 1867 and I want to incorporate some form of armored battle "walkers" (aka mechs). Looking for ideas for powertrains that could conceivably run such a...
Many know that the Lantern Corps of DC Comics are capable of constructing objects of any shape or size out of hard light using their power ring fueled by their emotions. However, I'm wondering what...
Based on the planet from this question. The main thing that distinguishes this planet from, say, Europa, is the handwavium light-source, which I must assume is wrapped in a perpetual explosion wrap...
My non-magic fantasy world has a species of hominid that lives in a huge and wide sierra of mountains. If they had split off from the (now dominant) human species a couple million years ago, (say a...
along time ago a group Australopithecus somehow manged to get washed ashore on let's say the Antarctic peninsula or at least an island near Antarctica now inhabiting mainland Antarctica and evolvin...
I'm thinking about an AI similar to The Machine from Person of Interest but in a generally more advanced setting, and with a likely more broad goal of serving as a shepherd for humanity as opposed ...
Roughly how long could an 'Oumuamua type object get if created naturally or if created artificially using fused rock? What would be the limiting factor governing the length of such objects? Oumaum...
I'd like to have faster-than-light travel (and communications) be an late-game option for a video game I am working on. The extent of the playable universe is approximately 4 million light years in...
so i want to create a monster that dwell or fly inside thunderstorm as their defense mechanism, though they do goes down to get food, i want to know what method or modifications need for creature t...
In my fictional world, the planet has some very strong winds that regularly blow across large areas of land. In this world, however, very large, tall trees grow (the reason for the size of the tree...
To try and explain the situation the best I can imagine one of those sci-fi/fantasy situations where whenever someone is asleep they can experience new things. Whether they somehow end up in some d...
Ok, assuming a planet that's tidally locked to its sun, but is otherwise roughly similar to earth in gravity and atmosphere. Classic tidally locked planet: one side is covered in ice, the other is...
The setting I've cooked up for a D&D campaign I'm running features a fair amount of buildings that have been totally abandoned by civilization for hundreds or even a thousand years. Obviously w...
Humanity discovered a new energy source, virtually infinite, that can produce gigawatts of electric power using devices of few kilograms. Land and sea transport obviously will switch to electric m...
A group of English-speaking settlers travel to the Earth-like exoplanet of Rataan, which is 5 light years away. They board the generation ship Genesis that will reach Rataan in 200 years (0.25% of ...
On one hand, heavier gravity would make flying more difficult, owing to greater weight restrictions on the flying creatures' bodies. On the other hand, the greater density of the atmosphere on ...
An extension to another question about Why would humans be the dominant species? In my story Giants, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to why...
In my story Giants, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to what sort of environment (on earth) would best suit them? some basic characteristics ...
Many countries, authorities and companies have the concept of a maximum weight limit for manual handling, both to protect their workers and to protect themselves from lawsuits. Interstellar Shippi...
There is a video from "What If" that tells about (precisely) "What if Earth was a moon of Jupiter":What if the Earth Was a Moon of Jupiter And, in a short story I am writing in an alternate realit...
There are three "worlds" in this setting: Heaven, Hell and Midgard, Midgard being Earth and the entire Milkyway galaxy. When a demon or an angel enters Midgard, they can't just walk there, as they...
Say the word "Australia", and one of the first things to come to your mind would be the marsupials. Of the 334 species of pouched mammals whose earliest ancestors witnessed the fall of the dinos...
I got motivated to write a novel after reading about ocean slugs that managed to evolve into fish. In my fictional world I'm writing how a few fish shaped slugs made their way on land and managed t...
I'm working on a bioweapon created by an extraterrestrial agent. The being is 2.5 m tall, humanoid, digitigrade, intelligent and mostly predatory. However, it does not require water, food or oxygen...
I am creating a science fiction worldbuilding project, in which humanity has colonised distant exoplanets. One such planet is a Venus-like planet in the sense that it has a perpetual cloud cover, a...
My world is basically the surviving chunks of an exploded planet (there's a little more to it than that but that's the important part for the question, ignore any issues of gravity etc.) and while ...
We've found a habitable planet orbiting a red dwarf star some light years away and conditions are Earth-like enough that a colonization project was initiated. Before any humans landed on the planet...
I want to create a harmless snake that can spit like a spitting cobra as a defense while kills its prey by constriction. Its venom is considered harmless, but when goes to the eyes it causes tempo...
I'm thinking about an alien race that evolved from large terrestrial crustaceans and has developed a somewhat large brain. Like crabs on earth, these creatures have pinchers wich they use for self ...
Antimatter gets used a lot in SciFi due to it's mind-bending energy density. If you can store it in a form that requires no power and is at least mildly idiot-proof then you've just solved half of ...
Double or binary planets are a really cool science fiction idea. A second Earth hanging ominously in the sky. Co-orbital or trojan planets are also interesting in that you have them on more or less...
The characters in my world use oxygen spheres like the top answer to this post (a leather balloon filled with air) to safely traverse land filled with smoke. How would you know when you are runnin...
Is there a feasible setup where the Sun has expanded enough to make the Earth uninhabitable, but some of the other rocky bodies in our solar system (past Earth) become more reasonable colonisation ...
I am currently working on a character backstory for somebody whose fictional character gets sent back in time an era before his species existed (essentially to bronze-age times or even earlier, it'...
I am working on a world where an event, like a celebration, occurs during every lunar eclipse. I would like to have lunar eclipses occurring more frequently--maybe even once a month--in order for...
